Does Matter Create Consciousness? Or Vice Versa?

[bennyboy]

See, there's your problem: you're already buying into the whole "these are real people, not just figments of my imagination" idea. Once you make that giant leap in faith, all the other crazy stuff just falls into place:
-"Not eating won't free my soul from worldly illusions, it will just kill me."
-"If I wish hard enough and with faith, my desires will probalby still not manifest in reality."
-"Masturbating on buses is bad."

Where's the fun in that?

Slippery slope fallacy.


For what it's worth, I look for experiential invariants, not correspondence to reality. I need not concern myself with why putting my hand on a hot stove results in an unpleasant experience because I know the provocation of pain by repeating that stimulus is robustly predictable and reliable. Whether the hot stove is 'real' or not need never enter into it, unless I want to interact with the stove in novel ways.

How do you establish qualia as an "experiential invariant" ?